


yet another year or more

by wildparsnip



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, DCU, DCU (Comics)
Genre: Character Study, Family Dynamics, Gen, Reminiscing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-30
Updated: 2017-06-30
Packaged: 2018-11-21 08:54:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11354088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wildparsnip/pseuds/wildparsnip
Summary: Jason’s done more crazy shit in midair than he could have dreamed of when he was still small enough for Dick to lift up to the high bar. He’s felt bigger rushes in freefall than any of this gymnastics gear can give him now. But that’s not why he always stays away from this corner of the Cave.





	yet another year or more

Jason never goes to the Cave if he can help it, not unless Bruce is out of town, or, better, off-planet. But four missing girls in as many nights means that this case can’t wait on Jason’s issues and burning desire to throw Bruce through a few plate glass windows, so he mans the fuck up and sneaks in— _approaches strategically—_ around midday. If it was a rough night Bruce should still be asleep, and if not there’s a WE shareholders meeting this morning—the asshole still gets the memos emailed to Jason—and that should take care of Mini-Me too. The tiny terror’s off in the ‘Haven with Dick. Stephanie’s in class, or she should be, and Cass doesn’t usually train in the Cave. 

He’s set the system to run through the video surveillance files he brought with him, but even the Cave computers need time. Jason can’t stand still. He runs his hands idly across the console, rests his palms on the edge and flips into a handstand, imagines Bruce’s face, then curls his own lip in self-disgust and drops down. He slaps his hands against his thighs, spins on his heel to pace. His eyes land on the parallel bars in a shadowed corner of the Cave.

It’s been a while since he messed around with that shit, can’t imagine working on it when any of the others are there. Especially Dick, fuck, Jason can still remember the first time Dick came over the mansion to work with him on the bars and the beam and the trampoline.

That shit’s old hat now, of course, and Jason’s done more crazy shit in midair than he could have dreamed of when he was still small enough for Dick to lift up to the high bar. He’s felt bigger rushes in freefall than any of this gymnastics gear can give him now. But that’s not why he always stays away from this corner of the Cave.

The Cave is empty now, though, just the dripping of water and the near-silent hum of the monitors.

And Jason hates himself for it but he finds himself wandering slowly over, casual, like he can keep telling himself he’s not really doing it until he’s standing in front of the parallel bars. Jason feels a moment of vertigo when the bar seems absurdly low to the ground, and his stomach twists when he realizes that he was much smaller the last time he stood next to it. It’s the same bars, worn just that much more by new sets of hands.

Jason saw Tim over here once, going through a routine, and his face had been as serious as if he were looking at a crime scene, and looking at that little frown, anger had bubbled up hot and sick in Jason’s stomach and he’d left the Cave to find someone in need of a beatdown. Fucking freak, he’d thought. Didn’t anyone ever tell you that this shit is supposed to be _fun_?

The rage that had fueled his first months back in Gotham has subsided by now, and took with it the tangle of outrage and contempt and, fine, _betrayal_ that Jason used to feel whenever he looked at Tim. They can work together now. But Jason finds a little piece of resentment still that Tim’s hands have been all over this gear, like it’s nothing, like it’s _his_ and he doesn’t even care about it, casually possessive of yet another thing that Jason himself can’t bear to touch. 

Before he can think any more about it he throws out a hand to grasp the bar. And then he feels ridiculous, even though there’s no one there—no one’s here, it’s _okay_ —to see him place his other hand on the bar and pull himself up. 

At first it’s awkward. Jason feels self-conscious in the Cave, the shadows looming, and all these motions feel artificial, contrived, nothing like what it’s like to move across Gotham. Jason swings up into a handstand, comes to rest and thinks for a second, fuck this, thinks about leaving the Cave and all this shit behind, going back to his own neighborhood, shit he knows, shit that _matters._ He thinks of what Bruce would say if he walked in now.

But the first flip he tries is so smooth, the smack of his hands grabbing the bar again so satisfying. And it’s the kind of thing he would never try on the streets, ridiculously impractical, because unlike some people Jason doesn’t try to work gymnastics into every goddamn mugging he breaks up. It feels good to stick it, though, and then it’s like the first time he rode a motorcycle or threw a knife after he came back—he doesn’t think, he just moves.

He knows himself too well to be surprised when he starts moving through one of the routines that Dick had taught him, the catch and release familiar. So easy. He stops thinking about the next pass, the next twist, stops thinking about the computers and the missing girls and Bruce’s face and the weight of the Cave’s shadows on his shoulders.

He flies.

When Jason was younger and more prone to handing out beatdowns to anyone and everyone who deserved it—and it turns out that’s a whole lot of people—he had been pretty skeptical of Dickie’s fancy flipping, at least at first. It hadn’t been until Bruce sent them out together, just him and Dick, that Jason started to get it. He saw Dick take down three bangers, boom boom _boom,_ before they knew what hit them and without letting his feet touch the ground. Dick flew, and Dick laughed, and Dick reached out a hand to Jason, to show him how. 

Back in the Cave, now—again, _still_ —Jason can hear Dick’s instructions, encouragement, like Dick’s voice is really in his ear. Dick calling him _little brother._

Jason listens. He moves his hands when Dick tells him, tucks his knees and lengthens his spine to the sound of Dick’s praise, and he hears, like he hadn’t then, the naked affection in the words, how much Dick wanted him to be good at this, to love it like Dick himself did. 

He’s not rushing the routine, taking the time to feel it everywhere, the friction on his palms, the pull in his shoulders, the air rushing in his ears through controlled falls that bring him back upside-down and vertical. It feels so _good,_ and even the memories can’t complicate it enough to overcome the simple pleasure of it.

Jason’s poised upside-down before the combination dismount, visualizing the motions, listening to the distant echo of Dick’s voice, when

 “You have too much hip flexion in your transitions.”

That voice is all too real like Dick’s voice in his ears was not, real and present and standing _right behind_ Jason, and an icy shock of adrenaline obliterates ease of the moment before. Held still at the top of his arc, Jason sucks down a breath and holds one moment, two moments into the silence, but it’s ruined, because the silence is now full of Bruce’s breathing, and there’s nothing else but the sickness in his stomach and the ache in his shoulders.

God fucking damn it.

His arms are starting to shake a little from holding the handstand (perfectly vertical, fuck you, Bruce) and Jason knows that he can’t just stay here and hope that Bruce fucks off. The joy of it’s gone, anyway. But fuck if he’s gonna cut off the routine early because of Bruce. 

So Jason pulls in another deep breath, releases all the tension that just invaded his muscles, lets himself fall into the dismount, and sticks the goddamn landing. 

He’s out of breath when he turns to face Bruce, and trying to ignore the sick feeling in his stomach, something like shame. How long has Bruce been standing there, watching him?

Bruce hasn’t said a word since his little pronouncement, is standing with arms at his sides, and a distant part of Jason’s mind recognizes that as the most non-threatening posture Bruce knows how to muster.

But. “The _fuck_ are you playing at?” Jason spits, hearing his own heartbeat loud in his ears.

The words echo, and the Cave swallows them. 

Bruce shifts in place at that but says nothing.

Jason feels off-balance and it just makes him angrier. This was a bad idea, stupid, so stupid of him to look twice at any of this, to think he could just go back like nothing has changed. _Everything_ has changed. And here he is messing around like he’s still in the green panties, like _playing_ in the Cave is a thing he can do. 

And then his eyes fall again to Bruce’s loose hands, the way his palms are turn just the slightest bit forward, the barest hint of…what? Apology? _Supplication_?

Jason looks at Bruce’s open hands and he suddenly feels empty, hollowed out, the bubbling rage just…gone. He doesn’t want to fight, not today; not this fight, again. Bruce never changes and Jason could gouge Bruce’s eyes out, for thinking that nothing has changed, should change. That _Jason_ hasn’t changed. But Jason can feel the burn on his palms, Dick’s voice is ringing in his ears, and no part of him wants to fight with Bruce about the shit from the past that can’t be changed, the lies and the betrayal and the fucking _death_ that lie between the man Jason is and the boy Bruce wants to have back. The boy on the parallel bars.

Jason’s not that kid and never will be again, no matter what Bruce wants to believe. Jason knows better than to waste his time talking about bullshit that doesn’t change a thing. But Jason just found himself tracing the shape of his own ghost through the air, and found it didn’t hurt, like putting weight on a twisted ankle only to feel no pain, only a shadow of it.

The sweat’s starting to cool on his body; Jason hadn’t realized how long he’d been on the bars. He needs a shower and a fucking drink and to finish the search he came to the Cave to run in the first place. He needs to stop staring at Bruce’s open hands like they’re the answer to a question he hadn’t realized he’d asked.

Bruce hasn’t moved and for an absurd moment Jason wants to reach out to touch, to see if maybe that would make him move, do anything.

Bruce takes a step forward, just one. 

And that’s when Jason walks around the bars and past silent staring supplicating Bruce with his single awkward outstretched foot and past the humming monitors and onto his bike, cold now, right out into the sun and Gotham’s warm and undemanding embrace.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Elizabeth Bishop’s “The Prodigal”
> 
> The brown enormous odor he lived by  
> was too close, with its breathing and thick hair,  
> for him to judge. The floor was rotten; the sty  
> was plastered halfway up with glass-smooth dung.  
> Light-lashed, self-righteous, above moving snouts,  
> the pigs' eyes followed him, a cheerful stare—  
> even to the sow that always ate her young—  
> till, sickening, he leaned to scratch her head.  
> But sometimes mornings after drinking bouts  
> (he hid the pints behind the two-by-fours),  
> the sunrise glazed the barnyard mud with red  
> the burning puddles seemed to reassure.  
> And then he thought he almost might endure  
> his exile yet another year or more.
> 
> But evenings the first star came to warn.  
> The farmer whom he worked for came at dark  
> to shut the cows and horses in the barn  
> beneath their overhanging clouds of hay,  
> with pitchforks, faint forked lightnings, catching light,  
> safe and companionable as in the Ark.  
> The pigs stuck out their little feet and snored.  
> The lantern—like the sun, going away—  
> laid on the mud a pacing aureole.  
> Carrying a bucket along a slimy board,  
> he felt the bats' uncertain staggering flight,  
> his shuddering insights, beyond his control,  
> touching him. But it took him a long time  
> finally to make up his mind to go home.


End file.
